Posts Tagged ‘innovate’

Yeah, you get the message. And perhaps a bit more. Like technology is somehow inherently bad.

It’s not. Just like a car is not inherently a killing machine. It’s the drunk behind the wheel and the car that makes the vehicle a potential lifetaker.

We have a choice to use the technology or not. When we are using the technology, we have a choice of how we use it. We can use it pointlessly or meaningfully. We can use it as planned or in unintended or expected ways.

I think that when we use it in unintended but meaningful ways, we start to innovate. So by all means disconnect to connect. But you need to connect to innovate.

First, one of the writing samples was actually a speech. Writing for a speech is not the same as writing for print. Yes, you are writing a speech, but not for someone to read like a book. The words don’t leap out of the medium the same way when they are delivered by the speaker.

Second, technology cannot (yet) replace complex human judgment, emotion and subjective interpretation. While this might have been a case of pushing the limits of technology, I also thought that this was using technology when it did not fit the situation.

Do educators make the same mistake when pushing the envelope with technology? Sure we do. But the harm is not in trying. The harm is in providing fuel for the naysayers to say “I told you so!”

But to the naysayers I reply:

Or as James Arthur Baldwin originally put it: Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.